Under Donald Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency has found itself in the unusual position of being led by a man who has spent his career trying to destroy it: Scott Pruitt, a longtime ally of the fossil fuel industry who previously sued the agency more than a dozen times, and who recent reports suggest is actively shunning pro-environmental groups. As goes Pruitt, so goes the E.P.A.; earlier this year, the agency began to scrub all references to climate change from its Web site, a trend that has continued incrementally, and on Sunday The New York Timesreported that conference talks led by three E.P.A. scientists about the nature of climate change were abruptly canceled just days before they were scheduled to take place.

An agency spokesman declined to offer an explanation for the cancelation of the October 23 climate-change talks in Rhode Island, where three scientists were scheduled to discuss the effects of climate change on Narragansett Bay, the region’s largest estuary. According to the Times, the scientists were set to present findings that climate change is impacting sea level, precipitation, air and water temperatures, and fish near the estuary. Now, the scientists are reportedly allowed to attend the event, but they’re barred from making any presentations and from going to the opening news conference, exacerbating fears that Pruitt’s agency will silence employees from speaking out on—or even continuing to study—the widely proven phenomenon.

Though it’s unclear whether the two events are connected, the cancellation came just a day after a Timesreport that a recently appointed executive at the agency might be responsible for weakening regulations. Nancy Beck, who joined the E.P.A.’s toxic chemicals unit in May, spent the previous five years at the chemical industry’s trade association, the American Chemistry Council, as an executive. During her tenure, the agency has re-written rules allowing the use of some toxins and making health effects of others more difficult to track, including perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, an ingredient used in non-stick pans that has been said to cause birth defects and kidney cancer. The changes made under Beck’s leadership could result in an “underestimation of the potential risks to human health and the environment,” according to a confidential internal memo from the top official at the Office of Water, the Times reports, while E.P.A. spokeswoman Liz Bowman (a former American Chemistry Council spokeswoman) sharply disputed this account. “No matter how much information we give you, you would never write a fair piece,” she said. “The only thing inappropriate and biased is your continued fixation on writing elitist clickbait trying to attack qualified professionals committed to serving their country.”

Both Beck’s appointment and the canceled talks indicate that the E.P.A. is set to continue its pattern of obfuscation when it comes to scientific fact—a tactic scientists feared would be employed under Trump. As John King, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, told the Times, “It’s definitely a blatant example of the scientific censorship we all suspected was going to start being enforced at E.P.A.” In an interview last week, Pruitt said that he plans to assemble a team of independent experts to investigate climate-change science. “This is a robust, meaningful debate, discussions, about what do we know and what don’t we know, and let the American people be consumers of that, so that we might be able to see consensus around this issue,” he said.